0 a mental illness in which people eat far too little or far too much food and are unhappy with their bodies --
1 medical an illness involving the amount of food a person eats, such as bulimia (nervosa) or anorexia (nervosa) --
Occasionally a neurotic individual with a pre-existing eating disorder will become obsessed with fasting and colon cleansing as a justification to legitimize their compulsion.
Eating disorders mean eating compulsively because of a distorted body image.
